This meeting was organized jointly by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the ASCR, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and the Israeli Embassy in Prague on May 30-31, 2012. It represented a unique opportunity, especially for students and young scientists, to meet highly distinguished international scholars and discuss their ideas and projects directly with the most knowledgeable experts in the fields of biological chemistry. structural biology and material sciences. The invited speakers included four current Israeli Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry: Ada Yonath (Weizmann Instiute, Rehovot, Nobel Prize 2009), Aaron Ciechanover (Technion, Nobel Prize 2004), Avram Hershko (Rappaport Institute. Haifa, Nobel Prize 2004) and Dan Shechtman (Technion. Nobel Prize 2011) and other extraordinary scientific personalities from the USA, Israel, Germany and the Czech Republic, accompanied by several of their inspiring and talented students. and Luděk Svoboda.
The National Technical Library in cooperation with the Czech Technical University and Instutute of Chemical Technology in Prague cosponsored the international conference Knowledge, Research and Education on September 8-9, 2011. Research metrics was the topic of this meeting. Organizers sought to draw attention to the often controversial mechanisms for evaluating the results of research and their subsequent impact on its continued financing and institutional support. The conference brought together university dignitaries, senior members of the faculties, library staff and representatives of the publishing industry for the purpose of facilitating discussion of research trends and policies that inform their respective fields of interest shared by all. One of the key lectures was given by the co-Director of CERGE-EI Štěpán Jurajda. He reviewed currend evidence of the productivity of Czech science (by field) based on bibliometric data, pointed to typical mistakes made in recent evaluation exercises and analyses, illustrated these by using examples typically drawn from social sciences, and offered a few tentative bibliometric facts. and Štěpán Jurajda.